State Legislators Refuse to Disclose Income Information to Corruption Panel

The New York state Legislature has refused a request by a state investigative commission to disclose detailed information about the sources and amount of outside income earned by lawmakers, according to a letter sent jointly on Friday by attorneys for the Senate and Assembly.

The requests by the Moreland Commission to Investigate Public Corruption “substantially exceed what New York law authorizes,” said the letter to the commission’s chief of investigations, Danya Perry. “All information legally required to be disclosed and relevant to any legitimate inquiry has already been disclosed.”

State ethics laws passed in 2011 force lawmakers, who are part-time employees of the state, to reveal clients to whom they have personally provided service–or people they refer to their firms as clients–who have business before the state.

In an Aug. 27 letter, however, Ms. Perry told all members of the state Senate and Assembly to provide more comprehensive information about their outside income. Legislators with outside income exceeding $20,000 from any single source other than their positions as elected officials in 2012 were requested to provide the amount of the compensation, the basis for computing that compensation and, in the case of attorneys, a list of clients in any publicly filed criminal matter “in which you are the attorney of record.”

“Many of the issues that arise concerning public ethics involve this confluence of public and private activity,” Ms. Perry wrote in the letter.

A spokeswoman for the Moreland Commission was sharply critical of the Legislature’s refusal to provide the material requested.

“We believe the legislature’s position is legally indefensible, ethically repugnant, and disrespectful to the public’s right to know,” the spokeswoman, Michelle Duffy, said in an email.

“There are a number of avenues through which the Commission can obtain the information being sought, and we will pursue them,” she added.